Classic Bike Guide - Real rides, real riders

The World's Fastest Norton

Vietnam 1966. Sergeant Sam Wheeler looked out into the blackness and waited for another incoming mortar round. “I couldn’t see a thing,” recalls Sam. “I was on guard duty at an artillery compound in Song Be almost every night for a year and I reckoned if being conscripted into the Army could get me killed I might as well die having fun. So decided to build another Streamliner when I got home and started designing it in my head as I peered into the dark looking for Viet Cong.”

Sam built his first Streamliner with some school friends, making the frame out of half-inch electrical conduit, bought for 10 cents a foot, from Sears. A glassfibre cone at the front end minimised drag – $1 from a WD surplus store. The wheels were bicycle and the 125cc Villiers engine was ex-James motorcycle. “If it cost more than a dollar it was too much!” laughs Sam. They took their creation to El Mirage, a six mile long dry lake bed of clay and silt, in California’s Mojave Desert. Sam was timed at 72mph. He was hooked.

With the 1963 Bonneville Speed Trials just weeks away, Sam and friends Roger Lamb, Jay Woods and Russell Avery acquired some Honda 50 wheels. “Real motorcycle wheels,” says Sam. “Got some 17in alloy WMO rims, put those on it, and then fitted what we thought were high-speed tyres.” His father rolled a new body out of aluminium sheet, and remounted the nose cone. Then they took it over to the Montesa dealer to ask if he would lend them a better engine.

There was no joy at Montesa, but Doug Yerky, the West Coast distributor for Bultaco, lent them a 125cc TSS engine. They geared it for 150mph but it wouldn’t rev past 5000 and the best Sam could manage was a 95mph pass. The friends stripped the engine and found that the crank had twisted. Speed Week was over and the Bultaco Streamliner was sidelined.

“It was fun, but that Streamliner scared me,” confesses Sam. “Everything was done on the cheap... we called it the Electrical Conduit Special.”

The friends were 20 years old. One was drafted and joined the Navy, another went to college. “Oh, and we discovered girls,” adds Sam. Then he was drafted too. By the time Sam returned in September, the1968 Bonneville meeting was past. Bob Leppan had set a new absolute land speed record for motorcycles in his nitro-burning double Triumph engined Gyronaut X-1 at 245.667mph.

“I thought I could still beat that with a single engine,” says Sam. “I was going to build a Streamliner with a Triumph twin because everybody did but then I found this fellow Dick Moulder, who wanted to build a Streamliner and he was already being helped by Norton’s West Coast distributor.”

Sam didn’t have any money but wanted to build a Streamliner and ride it. Moulder knew how to tune an engine but didn’t know how to build a Bonneville bike: “He was likeable, but his drag was pretty scary!” laughs Sam. It was fortunate that Moulder lived in Huntingdon Beach, California, just six miles from Sam’s place in Costa Mesa. It seemed like a match made in heaven. Sam was 26, Dick was 34.

It took Sam a year to finalise the design and build the streamliner. Back in England, Norton arranged for Dunlop to supply ‘300mph tyres’. The whole bike was designed around those tyres and the 750cc twin. Sam went for the smallest frontal area he could produce, since air resistance increases in a geometric progression as speeds go beyond 200mph.

The partners bought a drop tank off a Lockheed Starfighter for $89. That was the cheap part. By the time they finished they’d spent $6000 – still a fraction of most Bonneville streamliners. Sam designed the chassis to fit inside the drop tank. Most of the frame was from one-inch carbon steel tubing, with the central U-section where Sam would sit made out of thicker three-inch tube. Safety rules demanded a roll bar over the rider’s head, so a length of one-inch tube bridged the U-section. “I’m glad that I never tipped over – it wouldn’t have worked in a bad crash!” Bonneville officials also recommended a parachute.

Sam used the Commando’s Isolastic swinging arm suspension: “Everything was already made, I wanted to keep everything light to cut down on rolling resistance, plus my head would be resting on the roll bar, and the Isolastics would smooth the ride. It worked well.” Sam designed a leading link front suspension, with thick alloy plates either side of the wheel and red spring Curnutt mx shocks.

When Moulder had finished preparing the engine, which included a hotter cam, polished ports, multi-angle valve grinds, Carrillo rods and Amal GP carbs, legendary Carl ‘CR’ Axtell put the Commando on his dyno and recorded 65hp at the rear wheel. Things were looking good – even with the body on, Sam’s creation was lighter than a Commando road bike. Painted a brilliant canary yellow and wearing No 46, the Streamliner made it to the Salt Flats a couple of days later than Wheeler and Moulder intended. Bonneville old timers were surprised when Sam unloaded the Streamliner and casually announced he was out to capture the world record, but one blast down the Salt convinced them that the Californian meant business.

The engine needed a little fine tuning, but they were ready to go and paid the extra $20 for a record attempt. On 29 August 1970 Sam climbed into his fire resistant suit, buckled his orange Bell helmet with the tinted bubble visor, eased his way through the gull-wing doors and strapped himself in. Lying flat on his back, with his crotch just six inches from the front tyre he looked out of the Plexiglas windows on either side of the alloy shell and signalled that he was ready. The tow truck travelled down the Salt until Sam could lift the stabilisers. Seconds later he was flashing through the timing lights at nearly 214mph with his backside just inches off the Salt. “I was astonished at how well it handled,” says Sam. “Everybody else had vibration problems but our ‘liner was absolutely smooth. I could see everything clearly.”

They had one hour to turn the Streamliner around for the required return run. “You don’t think you’re going very fast even when you’re flat-out,” says Sam. “The only thing to judge your speed on the wide open Salt is when the mile markers go by.” One mile marker looks the same as any other and Sam admits he screwed up the return: “You had to use the same mile markers both ways for your timed runs, but I shut off early at the wrong marker and clocked just under 205mph. Still, an average 208.729mph was pretty neat.” Neat enough to give Sam the world record in the 750cc normally aspirated Streamliner class and make him only the sixth man in the world to better 200mph on two wheels. However, Sam had bigger plans – he wanted to be the first man on two wheels to do 300mph.

Norton’s top brass flew Sam, wife Carole and the Streamliner over to Wolverhampton. He says: “We put it in MIRA’s wind tunnel. The drag coefficient was 0.179, which was better than Campbell’s car Blue Bird, but the front was lifting at speed. They recommended fairing in the rear wheel and modifying the underside at the front. They didn’t want any of the Norton workers to see what we were doing, so I was given a back room at the factory.” Two weeks later he was back at MIRA, the drag was down to 0.15 and lift was gone. “The technicians said, ‘You’re going to need about 115hp at the rear wheel, at Utah, to go 300mph.’ That sort of power was possible with a nitro-burning engine.”

In December 1971 the press splashed the story that Norton was aiming to blow the 265.492mph world record, set by Cal Rayborn, on his nitro-burning 1458cc Harley out of the water. Rayborn had taken the record from Don Vesco, who had averaged 251.92mph using two supercharged, 350cc Yamaha two-stroke twins. Norton was sticking with a single engined pushrod twin. Sam has never been one for bull. He really believed that he could make 300mph. Norton boss Dennis Poore, admitted: “We have tried to hush up our world record bid, to be attempted in either Australia or America next year.”

The Streamliner was flown back to California so that Sam could make the changes to the body and re-skin it, with help from California Metal Shaping, the people behind Vesco’s bike. Sam sat so low that he had to look around the front end to see where he was going, but with a new silver paintjob he took the Streamliner to the Salt Flats in 1972 – and that’s when the law suit hit.

Moulder, sidelined by Norton, filed a claim for several thousand dollars against Norton Villiers in California, alleging the loss of an agreement to prepare engines. The court banned the Streamliner from running. “Things were looking great after the practice runs,” says Sam, “so this legal problem was timed to sabotage the effort.”

Sam is one of the quietest, modest men you could meet but he almost spits out the words. “I was so pissed that I went home. I told Norton when they’d sorted things out to give me a call and we’d try again, but they gave Moulder the Streamliner, a couple of Commando engines and about $5000 – which probably went to the attorney. Moulder sold the Streamliner to somebody who installed a Yamaha engine, and then the next owner tried to fit a rocket...”

Sam forgot about record breaking and worked as a mechanical engineer at E-Z-Hook, manufacturer of electronic test leads. Then at Christmas 1986 his boss Phelps Wood surprised him. “We drank too much that night,” laughs Sam, “so when Phelps asked if I wanted to build another Streamliner I said: sure – why not?”

He woke up hung over. Another Streamliner would be a lot of work and he hoped his boss had forgotten. “As soon as I walked through the door he said, ‘We got a deal, right, Sam? We’re gonna build this thing...’ so I couldn’t back out.”

After a year on design, Sam started on the E-Z-Hook Streamliner in 1987. With a stock 1052cc petrol Kawasaki ZX11 Ninja engine developing 127bhp and a drag coefficient of only 0.1 Sam clocked 256mph, in 1996. With a turbo, nitro-methane and 250hp he clocked 332.410mph in August 2004 to take the world motorcycle land speed record. That was set at a Southern California Timing Association meeting for cars and so did not have FIM recognition.

On 6 September 2006 he flashed across the Bonneville Salt Flats at 355.303mph in E-Z-Hook to make him the fastest man on two wheels. To claim to the world record he had to make a return pass, but the front tyre lost pressure and broke up at six-miles. The Streamliner tipped and slid 1⁄5 of a mile. Sam was unhurt, but his record attempt was finished. Chris Carr set a new world record at 350.884mph in BUB 'Seven’ powered by a custom built 3000cc V-Four.

Later, Sam received a call from a man who had his Norton Streamliner and he wanted $3000 for it. Sam drove out to a remote ranch in the Mojave Desert to see it. “It was a mess. I told him I had too many projects on the go and left it.” RPM Cycles in Dallas, Texas heard about the Norton and took on the restoration, Sam acting as consultant – and may give it one more blast on the Salt for old time’s sake.

In 2008 Sam managed 352mph at Bonneville but couldn’t make a second run because of parachute problems. Rocky Robinson’s twin Suzuki engined Ack Attack Streamliner set a new world record at 360.913mph. With E-Z-Hook repaired, Sam tried once more but the drive shaft broke and the chain smashed the clutch case – but he’ll be back. “I’ve been chasing the record for nearly four decades,” says Sam. “I’m not stopping now.”

Words: Phillip Tooth
Photographs: Sam Wheeler and Phillip Tooth